When he was a child growing up in Los Angeles, Byron Lynn Parker loved playing basketball and listening to West Coast rap.

He idolized Tupac Shakur, the popular rap artist gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996.

Byron “Winkie” Parker plays with neice

Parker’s favorite song was a 1994 hip hop tune called “Back in the Days” by Ahmad. The song now makes his aunt, Darlene Harris, who helped raise Parker, very sad.

“That song always brings tears to my eyes,” she said.

The lyrics call her back to her fun-loving nephew’s childhood:

Back in the days when I was young — I’m not a kid anymore
But some days I sit and wish I was a kid again…
But let me finish this reminiscin’ and tellin’
Bout when girls was bellin’ tight corduroys like for the boys
Basket weaves, Nike Court Airs, and footsie socks
And eatin’ pickles, with tootsie pops…

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.